The US Response to the World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis: Seize and Privatize

Andrés Arauz On August 10, more than 70 economists, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, former economy minister for Argentina Martín Guzmán, and myself, sent a letter to President Biden with a simple ask: return Afghanistan’s central bank assets, deposited at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to Afghanistan’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB). In the…

Afghan People Face a Deadly Humanitarian Crisis

Amitabha Roychowdhury As winter approaches, the UN Security Council should set aside differences and urgently focus on how to send assistance to Afghanistan’s impoverished people The massive humanitarian crisis and the perilous condition of the economy in Afghanistan are likely to worsen with the impending onset of the harsh winter season for the second time…

A Eurasian Jigsaw: BRI and INSTC Interconnectivity Will Complete the Puzzle

Pepe Escobar Shrugging off western obstacles, Eurasia’s ambitious connectivity projects helmed by China and Russia are now progressing deep into Asia’s Heartland SAMARKAND – Interconnecting Inner Eurasia is an exercise in Taoist equilibrium: adding piece by piece, patiently, to a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. It takes time, skill, vision, and of course major breakthroughs. A key piece…

White House Finalizes the Theft of Afghanistan’s Foreign Reserves

The Cradle On the first anniversary of the Taliban’s victory against the US-trained army, Washington unilaterally decided to keep $7bln of Afghanistan’s foreign reserves The government of US President Joe Biden has decided not to return Afghanistan’s foreign reserves and suspended talks with Taliban officials over the issue. “We do not see recapitalization of the Afghan central…

How a Missile in Kabul Connects to a Speaker in Taipei

Pepe Escobar Washington’s hard power display of taking out Al-Qaeda’s Al-Zawahiri will not be reciprocated by Beijing over Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan. It does however, definitively bury the decades-long era of cooperative US-Chinese relations. This is the way the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) ends, over and over again: not with a bang, but a…

The Empire is Not Done Torturing Afghanistan

Pepe Escobar Photo Credit: The Cradle Despite its resounding defeat, NATO is not quite done with inflicting misery on the land of the Afghans Once upon a time, in a galaxy not far away, the Empire of Chaos launched the so-called “War on Terror” against an impoverished cemetery of empires at the crossroads of Central and South Asia….

Afghanistan: Massive Earthquake Magnifies Existing Crisis

Abayomi Azikiwe During the early morning hours of June 22, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck the southeastern region of Afghanistan reportedly killing in excess of 1,000 people. This natural disaster will only compound the existing problems inside the Central Asian nation in the aftermath of a 20-year occupation by the United States and the North…

Why is the US Trying to Provoke a Conflict on the Afghanistan—Tajikistan Border?

Valery Kulikov Ever since the withdrawal of the last US troops from Afghanistan and the fall of the country to the Taliban (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation), Washington has been unable to come to terms with the loss of its influence in the region. It is therefore doing all it can to…

The Torrid Afghan Spring

Guadi Calvo With the arrival of spring, once again begins what has always been an opportunity to escalate the chronic conflict in Afghanistan, no matter who the opponents are, with new and always lethal actions. The Taliban used this strategy during the twenty years of the US invasion, preserving and strengthening themselves during the hard…

Afghanistan Braces for New War

M. K. BHADRAKUMAR There is media buzz lately about an anti-Taliban insurgency struggling to be born in Afghanistan. A former Afghan army general, Sami Sadat, is returning home as the West’s favourite to don the mantle of leadership of a pan-Afghan “resistance” movement against repressive Taliban rule.  There is a lot of infighting amongst marginalised…

Pakistan’s US-Backed Coup Regime Stirs Up Pashtun Hornet’s Nest

M. K. BHADRAKUMARAfghans protest against Pakistani air strikes, Khost, April 16, 2022 The Pakistani air strikes on Saturday on the eastern Afghanistan provinces of Kunar and Khost killing dozens of people may seem at first glance a crude knee-jerk reaction to the ambush in North Waziristan the previous day in which seven Pakistani soldiers were…

From Iran, Syria and Afghanistan to Ukraine: U.S. Empire Sows Violence and Chaos Yet Again

Dan Kovalik [Source: English.almayadeen.net] Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart The center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world… –William Butler Yeats As I wrote four years ago in 2018 after visiting Iran, there is a battle for civilization taking place. And note how…

Biden Covertly Continues the U.S. Forever War Against the Afghan People

Zachary Scott Afghans protest the former U.S. embassy building demanding the release of Afghanistan’s frozen assets and resumption of international funding amid worsening economic conditions in Kabul, Afghanistan, on December 21, 2021. [Source: theintercept.com] Over the past few months, U.S. lawmakers, the Afghan government, and the international community have called on Washington to stop strangling…

Blowback from Afghanistan

M.K. Bhadrakumar Fence along Durand Line separating Pakistan & Afghanistan Reports of the recent period are indicative of tensions between the Taliban forces and the Pakistani military deployed on their border. On December 22, the Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khwarazmi disclosed that the Taliban forces had stopped the Pakistani military from erecting an “illegal”…

Humanitarian Crisis Worsens in Afghanistan after Five Months of Economic Sanctions

Shriya Singh Afghani women protested in Kabul on December 29 to call on the US to release the country’s assets. Photo: Tolo News The global economic sanctions that were imposed on the interim government of Taliban in August have led the country on the path of an economic collapse and deepened a nationwide humanitarian crisis…

Afghan Women Protest Continued Denial of Rights, Extrajudicial Killings

Peoples Dispatch Photo: Tolo News Contrary to its promises, the Taliban government has failed to reopen most of the girls’ schools that were shut following its takeover and end restrictions on women working outside their homes. The government has also announced fresh curbs on the movement of women Security forces in Afghanistan fired in the…

Was America’s Longest War for Opium, Oil and Propping up the Stock Market?

John Potash Soldiers patrol opium fields in Afghanistan. [Source: bbc.com] On September 11, 2001—a day that will live in infamy in U.S. history—hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center in New York City and one side of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., which experienced destruction. President George W. Bush’s administration started a war in Afghanistan…

Why the World’s Eyes are on the Afghanistan-Tajikistan Border

Vijay Prashad Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon remotely addresses the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly in a prerecorded message on September 23. Afghanistan and Tajikistan share a 1,400-kilometer border. Recently, a war of words has erupted between Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon and the Taliban government in Kabul. Rahmon censures the Taliban for the…